UK given US spy agency's data: report

BRITAIN'S electronic eavesdropping agency has reportedly been covertly gathering information from leading internet companies through a secret US spy program.

The Guardian newspaper said that it had obtained documents showing that GCHQ had access to the PRISM system, set up by the US National Security Agency (NSA), since at least June 2010.

The documents were said to show that the British agency, based at Cheltenham, had generated 197 intelligence reports through the system in the 12 months to May 2012 - a 137 per cent increase on the previous year.

The newspaper said that the PRISM program appeared to allow GCHQ to circumvent the formal legal process required to obtain personal material, such as emails, photographs and videos, from internet companies based outside the UK.

GCHQ refused to comment directly on the report, but in a statement it insisted that it operated within a "strict legal and policy framework".

"GCHQ takes its obligations under the law very seriously," the statement said.

MPs expressed concern at the report.

Senior Conservative David Davis said it was difficult to reconcile GCHQ's statement that it was subject to proper scrutiny with the fact that parliament had no knowledge of the program whatsoever.

"In the absence of parliamentary knowledge approval by a secretary of state is a process of authorisation, not a process of holding to account. Since nobody knew it was happening at all there is no possibility of complaint," he said.

Liberal Democrat Julian Huppert, a member of the Commons Home Affairs Committee, said he hoped to force the government to respond to an urgent question on the issue in parliament on Monday.

"We have to understand exactly what information they have had and what the safeguards are. It's deeply, deeply alarming," he said.

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